Tuesday, October 30, 2012 -- Photographs taken by the Connecticut National Guard on Tuesday, October 30, 2012, during an aerial assessment of damage caused along the Connecticut shoreline by Hurricane Sandy.

HARTFORD -- Connecticut Light & Power projected it will "complete substantial restoration" of power for the vast majority of its customers by Monday or Tuesday.

The United Illuminating Company, the smaller of the two utilities, said its projections are for service restoration to 95 percent of its customers before midnight on Monday, which leaves about 16,000 out of that range.

The announcements were made Thursday by Bill Quinlan, a vice president at CL&P and James Torgerson, chief exective officer of UIL Holdings at a press conference at the Emergency Operations Center in Hartford.

Quinlan said at CL&P "vast majority" means approximately 98 percent of its customer base of 1.3 million will be restored by Monday or Tuesday, leaving 24,804 without power until later into next week.

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"This is a realistic estimate," Quinlan said, despite the many variables they had to consider.

"If we are able to pull this off, in my view, this is among the best restorations you will see in the industry."

CL&P had restored 475,000 outages by Thursday morning with 600 critical facilities, such as hospitals and fire stations back on line and 300 to go. Quinlan said some 250,000 were without power as of Thursday morning.

Quinlan said some areas are more difficult than others, particularly the southwestern portion of the shoreline and the eastern shoreline along Stonington, both areas that were hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.

He said those customers in the dark "have our undivided attention."

Quinlan said they have to set in excess of 1,000 new poles, replace several thousand spans of spans of wire and fix many transformers.

"There is a lot of work ahead of us particularly in these severely impacted parts of the state," Quinlan said, amounting essentially to complete rebuilds of the distribution system.

Quinlan said they expect to have 2,000 lineman within a few days and have 1,080 now with a firm commitment as of Wednesday from 300 more.

He expected that the vast majority of polling places will have power before Election Day.

Quinlan said the central portion of the state will have its power restored the quickest

Torgerson of UI said it will try to do better than 95 percent restoration by Monday night, but for now that is a realistic projection.

The UI executive said they plan to get the lights back on for 20,000 customers today. They have restored power to 92,000 homes and businesses since the storm hit with a total of 108,000 still without service.

Torgerson said by Friday they should have 1,050 working on restoration with employees putting in 16 hour days, mainly during daylight.

He said by Friday they will have town by town estimates on restoration times for each of its 17 town service area.

Torgerson rejected criticism from Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch that UI was favoring the suburbs over the state's largest city in its restoration effort.

He said they brought back 13,000 more customers in Bridgeport since 6 p.m. last night and got power to two priority schools. Torgerson said they spread their resources among all 17 towns.

"We show no prejudice for any town," he said.

UI has fewer than 200 polls it has to reset, he said, and they hope all the polling places within its jurisdiction are with power by Election Day.

Torgerson said its restoration projections are based on an assessment of two-thirds of its area. UI restored power to 30,000 more customers on Wednesday.

CL&P senior vice president Bill Quinlan said 360,000 customers had already had their service restored by Wednesday afternoon. UI senior vice president Tony Marone said service had been restored to 130,000.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made stops in Madison and Guilford Wednesday as part of his tour of hurricane damage in shoreline towns in the southeastern part of the state. His other stops Wednesday included Clinton, Westbrook, Stonington and New London. Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman made a stop in Milford.

Malloy's office distributed a collection of aerial photos taken by the Connecticut National Guard showing demolished houses, neighborhoods under several feet of water and tennis courts and athletic fields destroyed by wind and water.

The governor said at a 4 p.m. news conference that crews throughout the state were working hard to clean up damage and restore power. But he said empathized with increasingly frustrated people going into their second full day without power.

"I know if you don't have power you might not care much that they're working hard," he said. "Trust me. I get it. ... We're going to drive those who have the privilege of being our utilities to do as much as they can as quickly as they can."

Quinlan, of CL&P, said he wasn't worried that the company would fail to live up to expectations after giving a restoration estimate.

"I think we are going to challenge ourselves to do a thorough analysis of the damage assessment data," he said. "We are going to do an analysis of the resources we have available to put against that damage. We are going to give you the best possible estimate of our restoration projection."

Quinlan said crews had eliminated safety risks and were moving into "restoration mode." The first on the restoration list are hospitals, firehouses, police stations and wastewater treatment facilities. He said Wednesday that crews had energized more than 2,200 of them with 500 to go.

Marone, of UI, said the company's report Thursday will not have the specificity of when each street will be cleared, but that will come later.

Tweed New Haven Regional Airport reopened Wednesday only to have the first two US Airways Express flights get cancelled because of a lack of a functioning weather indication system and approach lights.

Those issues were expected to be fixed in time for the final flight set to land Tuesday, said Airport Manager Lori Hoffman-Soares.

A number of general aviation flights took off and landed earlier in the day, Hoffman-Soares said.

In another example of normalcy returning, more than 25 school systems opened on Wednesday, but 47 shelters are still being run by the Red Cross, primarily in Bridgeport, with 1,500 people sleeping there Wednesday.

Limited Metro-North train service will resume Thursday between Stamford and New York City while the railroad works to fix two tracks from New Haven for use by Friday.

James Redeker, commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, said the Stamford run is about half of the normal schedule. He urged those who do not have to commute into New York City, which has been crippled by storm, should not do so.

"They are working feverishly to restore two of the four tracks between New Haven to Stamford" to restart service from the Elm City, Redeker said.

The commissioner said two of the New Haven tracks have wires on them and switching problems need to be repaired before all four tracks are operable.

Malloy said there were 11 instances of carbon monoxide poisoning Wednesday afternoon -- up from three Wednesday morning. He reiterated that homeowners need to vent any fuel that they are burning in order to avoid putting themselves in danger.

The governor said he reached out to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to lobby for an extension for when the common application for college admission is due. Duncan can only make a recommendation on the extension, but Malloy said it was his understanding the deadline would be extended from today to sometime next week.

The state has gotten an extension on when the Race to the Top application was due to Nov. 7.

Malloy said that while helping Connecticut residents remains the top priority, his staff has reached out to the staffs of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to offer assistance.

"My heart goes out to them," Malloy said. "We are going to be good neighbors. We will do anything we can."

Malloy said the state leant a UH60 Blackhawk helicopter to the state of New Jersey.

Both New Jersey and New York City have also been declared federal disaster areas, and Obama joined Christie -- a Republican and an outspoken supporter of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney -- for a tour of damage Tuesday.

Obama held a conference call Wednesday with executives from utility companies throughout the country.

Malloy also said he is talking daily with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill to make sure the election preparations go smoothly. Officials were considering extending in-person registration for the presidential election another day. It had already been moved up from Tuesday to Thursday night.

Though local officials throughout the state had taken varying approaches to trick-or-treating Wednesday night, Malloy said the governor's mansion - which had 1,100 candy bars on hand - would be "open for business" for Halloween.